Probably not, but a recent Gallup poll compared political affiliations to a number of mental and social issues. It also found that Republicans who attend church weekly are 13% more likely to rate their health as "excellent" than Republicans who don't, as compared to only a 2% difference with Democrats. Gallup's conclusion:
Correlation is no proof of causation, of course. The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel).
Previous analysis (see Related Items) shows that a number of variables are related to self-reported mental health -- including, in particular, income. Because Republicans have on average higher incomes than independents or Democrats, part of the explanation for the relationship between being a Republican and having better mental health is a result of this underlying factor. The same is true for several other variables.
But the key finding of the analyses presented here is that being a Republican appears to have an independent relationship on positive mental health above and beyond what can be explained by these types of demographic and lifestyle variables. The exact explanation for this persistent relationship -- as noted -- is unclear.
Apparently there are a lot of people that do this. It's not a good idea, according to MiceAge:
The residue is often found at the end of the night however, and most of the people who carry out a last request by spreading a loved one's remains at The Happiest Place On Earth likely don't know the less-than-reverential end they meet at the hands of the ultra-efficient Disneyland Custodial Department.
A new website has spring up, dedicated to stopping the insanity that is "single-payer health care". Stuart Browning, one of the geniuses behind Indoctrinate-U, is shedding a little "Free-Market Cure" on the downside of the ideas portrayed in Fat ***'s Michael Moore's Sicko.
Check out this video: Uninsured in America. Might make you think twice before you let the government (who makes such great decisions as it is) decide what kind of health care you need.
Yep, you heard me. It's not global warming that's the problem. This scientist thinks the world will enter a "Little Ice Age" in 2020. He has a fascinatingly detailed analysis of why he thinks that, which is a very interesting read. I may not agree overall, I do agree with one thing: he says that the scientific debate is nowhere near settled enough to had it over to policymakers, and he's right. The only constant when it comes to climate is change, and people are taking this "global warming" think way too far out of hand.
And I thought my office was messy...
This picture was in a photo essay on Time.com. Hey Al, wanna save the environment? Start with your own first, will ya? If you clear off your desk you might find Hoffa's body, or those votes you lost in Florida. How could we have ever expected this guy to clean up this country if he can't even clean off his desk for a story in Time magazine?
What's with the paper noteboard instead of a dry-erase board? And I'm gonna take conservation tips from this guy? WTF?!?!
Just read this article on FT.com that basically says that the Carbon Credits industry is full of sh!t and doesn't actually do anything.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
The FT investigation found:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
$4 billion in unregulated, unchecked, and unnecessary money floating around an industry designed to fix something that science can't even agree is a problem? Awesome.
Enron, anyone?
Oleg Atbashian over at Pajamas Media has a very interesting commentary on how our left-leaning educational system produces the kind of hopelessness and dispair that could drive emotionally sick individuals like Seung-*** Cho to kill, because "you made me do it."
Personally, I think it's spot-on. Every time I see one of those stupid Che t-shirts, I shudder. These college students don't have a frickin clue how completely self-righteous it makes them look.
It makes me glad that I didn't go to college.
[via BrainTerminal]
You know, I am so tired of the racial double-standard in this country. Yeah, ok, it was terrible when Michael Richards called those guys the "N" word. But the phrase "nappy-headed hos" doesn't contain vulgar words or profanity. Those words probably echo 15-20x a day across the nation's radio stations. Most music that is a part of the black culture today talks about b!tches and hos, bling, cash, drinking, and drugs.
I'm all about equality. But at this point, the blacks are the ones holding themselves down, not us "white folk". If you don't want white people saying something, then get it the hell out of your vernacular. It's time for black people to get the "gansta" crap out of their culture, and stop being so ready to be victims.
Terrorism? Nope, Senator Barbara Boxer (D, Calif) thinks it's Global Warming. Funny how short America's attention span is. We always need something new to fixate on. If we don't solve the cutural issue between Radical Islam and the West, then a 1 inch rise in the oceans will be the least of our problems.
Oh yeah, and apparently global warming is now a National Security issue. Good thing that the problems of education, crime, and the runaway healthcare and legal systems have been solved, so we can focus on a problem that scientists haven't even agreed is an issue yet.
Whose brilliant idea was it to make Democrats the majority again? Oh yeah, it was our awesome Democratic process. Swell.
it's been a while since I've posted anything. The past couple days I've had a pretty bad cold, but I think I'm on the tail-end of it. Feeling quite a bit better than I was last night, and it turns out that Ambien is almost as effective a cold medicine as Nyquil. It's hard to sneeze like crazy when you're in a low-grade coma.
Today was probably one of the most productive days I've had in over a year. Unfortunately I can't talk a whole lot about specifics, but I got a ton done today, and it feels great.
Part of my newfound energy comes from resoling some long-standing issues with my girlfriend. But most comes from the fact that I watched "The Pursuit of Happyness" the other night, and decided it was time to get off my ass and start hustling. That guy had to live on the street with his kid before he "made it"... I've got it 10x better than him and I'm squandering it.
Hopefully, this energy burst will last a while, fueled by accomplishing more and more little things every day. One can only hope.
Anyways, I'm off to bed. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
If you needed a reason why 12 year olds shouldn't have cell phones, look no further than Sanjaya Malakar. It's like William Hung made it to the Top 10. I haven't heard so much screeching and yelling since Michael Jackson tried having sex with a woman.
PLEASE vote him off next week, I can't stand him anymore!!!
So earlier today I posted about the long-fought battle I'd been having with Community Server 2.1 on Windows-Now.com. It's been the bane of my existence ever since I moved to CS 2.1, which was originally supposed to make my life better. I'm probably one of the few sites on the web that uses a database that started in the first days of .Text, so I have no doubt that I have a few legacy stragglers in my database schema. But finally, the issue was resolved today, and I can finally sleep easy. I explained what happened in the forementioned post, but here I'll give you the solution.
After Microsoft PSS did a memory dump of my w3wp.dll process, they discovered that a singleton CommunityServer.Reporting object was blocking the thread from executing until the cs_PageViews_Add SPROC completed. The problem is, that SPROC took over 5 minutes to execute, due in part to the fact that my cs_PageViews table has over 2.5M records in it, and there are no indexes.
I had attempted to make this change last week when I saw it, but I applied it incorrectly, and I found out later that the SQL code wasn't as optimized as it could be. Jose provided me with an updated SPROC that works much faster than the one he originally posted, and I've augmented it with additional code that truncates the URL column of the cs_PageViews table, as well as adds the needed indexes to speed up lookups.
I'm told this fix will be in CS 2.1 SP3, but I've attached the fix to this post. I'd highly recommend that you test it and run it ASAP, that way you don't run into the same issues I have.
CommunityServerStuff 1.4
It's been a while since I've updated my CommunityServerStuff package. Since I released version 1.3, I've tracked down a number of issues that have affected the site. I found an issue in my SharingModule that was throwing exceptions on the Search Results page, as well as added a new TextPart that stops the Sharing markup from being displayed in posts where it is added.
In addition, I've added some extra tools to help with site migrations and management. I'll talk a little more about them when I put up the final binaries at some point in the next few days. In the meantime, I've moved the source over to CodePlex, where I'll be tracking issues and posting releases. I've posted the code to Source Control and you're welcome to sign up for the workspace and get it right now. When I post my release next week, I'll have a zip file with the source as well.
Lewis Black said it best:
Allow me to explain how our federal government works. To begin with, by the federal government I mean Democrats and Republicans 'working together'. And the only thing dumber than a Democrat or a Republican... is when those pricks 'work together'. You see, in our two-party system, the Democrats are the party of no ideas... and the Republicans are the party of bad ideas. It usually goes something like this: A Republican will stand up in Congress and say, "I've got a really bad idea!" And a Democrat will immediately jump to his feet and declare, "And I can make it shittier!"
It's been a crazy week in America. I've been watching the elections with great interest. In my personal opinion, the Dems shouldn't feel too empowered by the American people. The vote that led so many seats to switch the other way was not so much that people wanted the other guy, it's that they didn't want the current guy. How could America have actually wanted the Democrats? Did they campaign on fresh, well articulated ideas? Hell no (ok there are some very good exceptions). They campaigned with "we need to make a change in Washington."
Ok, you got your change... now what are you going to do with it? The sooner you stop working for us and stop working against Bush, the better off we'll all be. Better ACT fast, cause in 2 years we'll have better Republicans to put in your place if you don't.
UPDATE: The latest Newsweek poll confirms my argument using almost the exact same words, saying that only 27% of people thought the Democrats won because they had better candidates.
This is just hilarious.
John Kerry is an idiot. I don't think he made a mistake. If you watch the video, he blew right through the comment... he didn't look at it funny, like something wasn't right. And John Kerry would have wanted to get "a joke against Bush" right... that's what he loves to do. He said exactly what he was supposed to say.
Good thing he didn't get elected two years ago. We should have made him stay in Vietnam when we had the chance.
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